Advances in neuroscience have largely depended on the advance of technology, which continually provides new methods to perturb neural circuits and measure the circuit's response. One recent advance is the use of optogenetic tools to perturb neural circuits, particularly neural circuits with cell-type specificity. Optogenetics creates light-sensitive ion channels for optical stimulation of neural assemblies, and therefore allow experimenters or medical practitioners to selectively excite neural channels and/or inhibit other neural channels with high precision. Optogenetic technology is driving demand for new techniques and products to couple light stimulation with high-density neural recordings. Intracortical opto-electrical devices or “optrodes” provide the ultimate combination of perturbation and monitoring capabilities. However, the technology and application of conventional optrode devices are raw and inefficient. Commercial systems are not available and current techniques have limitations in most experiments. For instance, many neuroscientists modify commercially available optical fibers for use in their optogenetic studies, but these have drawbacks that limit practical applications, including having only one-dimensional light output, and being brittle and dangerous due to being made of fused silica. Furthermore, an electrical artifact, known as the Becquerel or photoelectrochemical effect, arises when an electrode is placed in a conductive medium and illuminated even at low intensity. In the Becquerel effect, incident light produces a current that affects low frequency potentials, thereby confounding some neural recording applications.
Thus, there is a need in the neural interface field, which includes the clinical treatment of neurological disorders, to create an improved waveguide neural interface device. This invention provides such an improved waveguide neural interface device.